RETURN.
On the 17th December 1855 the play-bills announced Rachel's appearance in Adrienne Lecouvreur, "positively for the last time in America." Those who wrote the announcement little knew that it was not only her last appearance in America, but her last appearance ou any stage.
A story is told of Forrest, the celebrated American actor, when in his old age he had alienated wife and friends by his violent temper, being complimented on his acting of King Lear. "Act Lear! What do you mean. Sir? I do not act Lear. I act Hamlet, Richard, Shylock, Virginius, if you please; but, by God! Sir, I am Lear!" Rachel might have said the same with regard to Adrienne Lecouvreur. For the first time "l'Adrienne de nos jours," as Gautier called her, was really in love. For the first time during her storm-tossed, artificial life the prospect of peace, repose, and an honourable existence seemed to be hers. For the first time the blue roses of happiness seemed to be within her reach, when they were snatched from her grasp by death:—
Ô triomphes du théâtre! mon cœur ne battra plus de vos ardentes émotions! Et vous longues études d'un art que j'aimais tant, rien ne restera de vous après moi—rien ne survit à nous autres—rien que la souvenir.
M. Chérie, who acted the Michonnet to her Adrienne that evenings remarked significantly to a friend as he left the theatre, "I had a niece who died of consumption. We have seen Rachel act for the last time!"
On the 19th she embarked for Havana, where she hoped to fulfil a lucrative engagement; but the doctors, much to Raphaël's disgust and to the disappointment of the Cubans; insisted on complete rest and absence from all excitement. On the 23rd December she wrote:—
I remained some time at Charleston, so as not to expose myself to the sudden change of climate. I feel rested, that is to say, I took a complete holiday at Charleston for nineteen days, but am not quite myself yet. I cough incessantly. I wished to give a representation two days before I left; a number of charming ladies having asked me to do so, I consented. That evening of Adrienne (it was Adrienne that they asked me to act) did not increase my illness, but it showed me that some time must elapse before I continued my tour through America. I am now at Havana, under the care of a good doctor, tolerably comfortable in my domestic arrangements, while the warmth, tempered by a refreshing breeze, is delightful. If I only had my children with me I should like to remain here for years. The subscription for the first twelve evenings is already more than 60,000 francs. The day of my début, however, is not decided on. Perhaps I shall be ordered several months' rest, and shall not act at all. Whatever happens, I am resigned. All I know is that my love for my children increases every day. I must live to see them grown up. I did not write to you from Philadelphia; I felt dying then.
Then comes the last despairing outcry, when she feels the impossibility of struggling any longer against the terrible fate that had overtaken her:—
N'allez pas! m'a-t-on dit—et moi, je suis venue.[1]
I am ill—very ill. My body and mind have both sunk down to nothing. I shall not be able to act at Havana either; but I have come, and the Director, exerting his rights, has demanded damages to the extent of 7,000 piastres. I paid, and have also paid the actors up to to-day. I bring back my routed army to the banks of the Seine, and I, perhaps, like another Napoleon, will go and ask a stone on which to lay my head and die at the Invalides. But no; I will find my two guardian angels—my young sons. I hear their voices calling me. I have been too long away from their kisses, their caresses, their love.
I do not regret the money I have lost; I do not regret the fatigue I have undergone. I have carried my name as far as I could, and I bring back my heart to those who love me.And so the great tragedian, who for years had filled Europe with stories of her fascinations and the power of her genius, now returned to Paris, the scene of her greatest triumphs, sad and broken-hearted, with but one desire, one thought—to escape publicity and be left in peace. Immediately on her arrival she left again for Meulan, where, in companionship with the man who ruled her heart, she spent some months vainly endeavouring to build up her shattered health. She had brought back her heart to those who loved her; but her body, "that body of which she had been so proud," was a mere wreck. In her calmer moments Rachel knew she was doomed; but, with the strange hoping against hope which distinguishes consumptive patients, she entertained to the last the hope of recovery. The one thing she longed for was to live forgotten by the world, that world for whose notice and applause she had struggled so hard all her life. The shadow of death had passed across her sun, and she who had, as a rule, so recklessly defied public opinion, now was filled with dread that the scandalmongers, pandering to the public taste for gossip, should write garbled accounts of her life, and give them forth to the world. "Perhaps this is the last thing I shall ever write," she said, giving her autograph to a friend who had asked for it. "In a week from this time I may be food for worms and writers of biographies."
She, who had once been leader of all that was most brilliant in the literary and artistic society of Paris, was now only able to receive one friend at a time, and then for not more than an hour or so:—"If you wish to see me at Meulan, take the Rouen Railway, Rue Saint Lazare, two steps from your house. Do you like country sunshine? take the eleven o'clock train; you will arrive at one. Only a pitiless two hours of conversation, and you must leave me. As soon as the north-east wind forsook the banks of the Seine, I had some days that were better. Unfortunately the improvement did not continue. You can boast of having une patraque d'amie."
Arsène Houssaye, in his sketch of Rachel, relates one or two conversations he had with her at this time:—
"'Alas!' she said to me, 'I have done with illusions. I see myself already in the tomb. You spoke at Rebecca's grave; you will speak also at mine.' Then an after-thought struck her. 'And yet no; say nothing, and prevent others from making speeches. Oblivion! you do not know the charm of being forgotten after a life spent before the public.'
"She spoke simply. Off the stage she had a horror of declamation, except when making fun.
"'You know my life and heart. It is not necessary to tell you I am not so bad as they would say. No one escapes his destiny. I was born away in the mountains, I hardly know where. I regret I did not live an obscure existence, like so many honest women who think of nothing but their children. Dragged by fate to Paris, I was obliged to live the life of Paris, passing from misery to luxury, exposed to dangers and temptations. My calumniators did not succeed in making me immoral. God loved me, since He gave me children. The justice of God is greater towards poor weak mortals than the justice of men. I do not fear Him, for I know there are mothers of families who will not be better received than I shall be at the Mercy Seat. If the writers of scandalous memoirs should seek one day to parody my life, tell it in all its simplicity. You know well I was not educated at the Sacré Cœur, and those who are, are not many of them better than I am, for I have only sinned against myself, while many of those young ladies only passed through the sacrament of marriage to betray it.'
"We were walking in the park; the dinner-bell rang. 'I think I have suddenly become very serious,' she said. 'I must not do so again, for I wish the evening to pass gaily.' Rachel was charming the whole time of dinner, but afterwards nearly fainted away with fatigue. She then talked of the possibility of her marriage with the man she loved."
Houssaye tells us, however, that, at the bottom of her heart, she knew this to be but a dream, one of those phantoms she had pursued all her life; the state of her health alone precluding the possibility of such a thing. She wrote, indeed, about this time to Jules Lecomte:—
If I had died in America, you would have been the first (with a generosity worthy of your head and heart) to consecrate a eulogistic feuilleton to me. And because I recovered in a miraculous manner, because I can hope to see you again and squeeze your hand as an old friend, you say to yourself, "Thanks be to goodness she is still alive! Now we will set to work to tease her." And there you are, delighted to excite my nerves—which I confess are over-susceptible—for the sake of amusing the public at the expense of poor little Rachel. A fine triumph for your intelligence! as if there were no other victims.
Is this the way you ought to behave to a poor creature who returns from the other world? Come, be just and good, and acknowledge that your statement was quite unjustifiable, so that I may pardon you at once.
By Jupiter! I consider I am very good-natured to treat you in this manner, for this letter is certainly not written by a grande tragédienne, but by a bon enfant qui s'appelle
The last short period that Rachel was destined to pass on earth free from bodily pain were these summer months. A stranger visiting Paris gives us a glimpse of her, still brilliant and fascinating. Although no longer able to appear on the stage, she was a regular attendant at the Théâtre Français, when in Paris. The narrator tells that, one evening, loitering in the foyer of the theatre, he heard a servant ask the ouvreuse if she had found a shawl which Mademoiselle Rachel had left in her loge the night before. On inquiry, he learned that Rachel was stopping in Paris for a few days, on her way to Ems, whither she was ordered by her doctor, to drink the waters. Anxious to see her, he called next day at her hotel, Rue Trudon, and was admitted:—
"She was in full dinner-dress, a beautiful blue silk, fresh from the dressmaker's—in fact, the modiste was putting in the last pins as we came in. She was going to the Champs Élysées to dine en petite comité at Émile de Girardin's.
"She appeared as well as I had ever known her, both in point of beauty and health, and I thought she had fairly recovered from her American misfortunes. Although it was July, she complained of the cold, and laughed and talked as she lit the fire, but said her voice was hopelessly gone. She spoke of her great rival, Ristori, with an earnestness and intensity of interest which showed how much she had been stung at the disparaging comparisons made between them. She discussed her merit with wonderful tact and fairness; but it was evident that she longed, if it had only been possible, for a contest face to face with her, in order that the world might do her justice."
After her return from Ems, later in the summer, Rachel wrote again to Houssaye, her directeur spirituel, asking him to come to Meulan to pay her another visit:—
"My dear Causeur (others are only bavards),—Come here and gossip with me, under the trees, of the days that are past. Sometimes I really think I have had no past. Life is a dream following a dream. We are never quite awake to the realities of life.
"I forgot to give you a lesson in billiards the other day. Come quickly; I will win some points from you. Unfortunately, I score always a black mark."
"Saint Victor," writes Houssaye, "came with me to Meulan. 'When I think,' Rachel said to him, 'that you have written so much about me, and I never have taken the trouble to read anything of yours.'
"It was his turn to have a lesson at billiards.
"Rachel gave him points, and gained a hnndred-sous piece. She laughed like a child, and kissed the effigy of Napoleon, the First Consul, that was on it, saying, 'I will have a brooch made of it to act Phèdre. On that occasion, dear Saint Victor, I will read your article.'
"With her usual capricionsness in conversation, she reverted to the days she had sung to a guitar in the streets of Paris. 'I will show you,' she said, 'how, by the tour de papillon, I amused the crowd.'
"She pretended to play the guitar, and gave us a Place Royale representation. Nothing more fantastic could be imagined. She began to sing; in the middle of her song she stopped, crying out, 'See, a butterfly!' and she ran after an imaginary butterfly; she raised herself on her toes; she pirouetted like a ballet-girl; she stretched out her hand, and at last caught the butterfly.
"'Ah,' she sighed, 'there it is. What a pretty dress butterflies' wings would make.'
"'Where is the butterfly?' asked Saint Victor.
"Rachel burst out laughing, and said, 'It has flown away.' And then, throwing herself into a chair, she added, 'Alas! life slips away running after butterflies—love, happiness, glory; but who catches them?'"
Towards the end of the summer of 1856, the disease had made such progress that the doctors peremptorily ordered Rachel to Egypt. Before leaving, she was obliged to come to terms with the Comédie Française, of which she was still a member. Her "leave" was understood to end on the 1st September. She wrote, therefore, to Achille Fould, the Minister, to obtain a prolongation of congé and a continuance of her salary. He communicated with the Director of the theatre and obtained leave of absence until 31st May 1857, and the payment of her salary. Her enemies were in the habit of declaring that Rachel's best piece of acting was the part of the malade imaginaire, and her unjustifiable pleas of bad health when she wished to shirk her duty told against her now. The public, and even many of her comrades, were incredulous; they thought it was another of the great tragedian's caprices, and she left Paris to a certain extent under a cloud. She was too weak and sad now, however, to mind much what the world said or thought. Her old friend, Jules Janin, did not let her go without a kindly word of "sincere and paternal tenderness." He told her she was still his child: that he had seen her grow up and reach the highest aim of her ambition. Now weariness, illness, and regrets for the art she was obliged for a time to forsake, were likely to discourage her. "But be strong and hopeful! Give yourself up to that Eastern sun and warm breezes which will restore you, happy and inspired, to those who love you, and to the great art of Tragedy, which has no future but in Rachel."
"À revoir, chère et tendre mère," she wrote to her anxious, heart-broken mother from Malta, on her way to Egypt, "ne fais aucun canevas de drame pendant mon absence." But, in spite of the delusions of the disease which sustained her in her brighter moments, she knew that there might be no revoir for her, and that the fifth act of the drama of her life was fast approaching.
On her arrival in Cairo, she was greeted by the French colony there with enthusiasm, and accepted the hospitality of one of them, Louis de Maubant, whose house was close to the Esbekieh. Here, nursed by her faithful attendant, Rose, living on nothing but asses' milk, of which she took seven or eight glasses a day, Rachel picked up wonderfully. She received a great many visitors every evening, lying on a sofa or reclining in an American rocking-chair. Reading or being read to was her favourite pastime. Michel Lévy, the publisher, had sent her a large parcel of new books from Paris for her amusement; but she preferred her Corneille, of which she had brought an old volume with her, bound in green morocco. That, the Bible, Bossuet, and Fenelon, formed the staple of her literature. Although not a believer in the doctrines of Christianity, her innate appreciation of the great and pure in art led her infallibly towards the grand poems of her nation, and those trumpet-blasts of eloquence and religious fervour which distinguished the productions of the preachers of the grand siècle. The poor passionate, storm-beaten heart seemed to rise, in the enforced calm and retirement of her present life, borne on the wings of these mighty souls, to greater heights than it had ever reached before; and her letters from the Nile, dried, as she says, with the sand of the desert and the dust of departed kings and queens, are tinged with the solemnity and dignity of death.
Soon she found the noise of the town too much for her, and accepted Soleiman Pasha's invitation to go and stop with him in his house in the old town of Cairo. Tiring shortly of the splendour and luxury surrounding her there, she hired an old Arab house close to the banks of the Nile, and set up house on her own account. One of her French friends at Cairo describes her, dressed in a foulard dressing-gown made by herself, serving out the soup, with the majestic air of a Cleopatra, to her guests at lunch, in an old chipped dinner-service she had picked up in the bazaar. As time went on, however, she got up less frequently, and coughed so incessantly that the doctors ordered her up the Nile, hoping that the air of Luxor would do her good. A diabieh was hired and fitted up, and she started on her journey. She attempted to write cheerful letters to her children and mother, describing to her son Gabriel, from Kemneh on the 21st December, how she is sitting at the open window of her cabin, the Nile, like a lake, unruffled by the slightest breeze, stretching round her, while the sun, too hot himself, plunges his rays into the cool water, casting a thousand different lights and colours on the surface of the stream. She says she coughs still, but is drinking health and strength with the balmy air of Upper Egypt; and yet how can health and strength be consolidated with a pulse that varied from 84 to 92?
On her birthday she wrote to her mother, sending, not her birthday kiss, but her kiss of resurrection, astonished as she was, after so much suffering, to find herself still alive. A feverish restlessness and longing to get home pursued her. The doctor, the ruins (she is anchored off the Temple of Thebes), the quiet, all irritated her nerves, and she was possessed with that nostalgie for Paris which pursues all Parisians abroad.
We are sorely tempted to give copious extracts from her letters written at this time. Nothing can be conceived more heart-moving than the alternations from sadness to hope. The plans she makes for the future. She intends to build a country house at Thebes, and have all her friends out to stop with her; she will go to Montpellier, New York, Charleston, which she remembered agreed so well with her. But it was really to Paris that her heart turned with most yearning; and there, it was said, those who had worshipped and bowed before the enchantress in her day of triumph were now become oblivious and indifferent. She wrote the following letter to him she loved from Thebes on the 10th March:—
For the last eighteen months they have been trying to make the coffin destined to receive me when I am dead. The carpenter, I think, must have struck work, he is so long about it, and meantime I am utterly worn out, and only long to lie down in a horizontal position for ever. I wish for nothing now; and, really, to drag on the animal life I am obliged to submit to since the development of this long, painful, and sad illness—better, a hundred times, be nailed down in one's coffin, and put to sleep with the mummies round me. I may not die of consumption, but will certainly die of ennui. A wonderful solitude surrounds me. Remember, I am alone with Rose, a cook, and a Polish doctor. Still, I have constantly before my eyes a blue sky, a delicious atmosphere, and this strong, gentle river, that bears on its bosom the poor invalid's boat as softly as a mother carries her first-born. But these awe-inspiring memories of ancient Egypt, these heaps of ruins, these colossal figures cut out of the granite rock, are all too overwhelming for a crushed spirit and weakened body. * * *
You would have wept had you seen me carried on board the vessel to go to Alexandria. I really cannot imagine what my frail body is made of. Life is so tenacious. I had no idea anyone could suffer like this and not die a thousand times. I must leave you now. I am seized by a fit of coughing that makes me hot and cold.
Then she gives the following translation of an Arab legend:—
Colombe blanche, où vas-tu? Tes ailes frappent l'air à pleines volées et t'emportent plus loin, plus loin, plus loin.
La Colombe.—"Je vais où il m'attend, au delà des nues plus loin, plus loin, plus loin."
La Jeune Femme.—"Colombe blanche, d'où reviens-tu? Tes ailes brisées me jettent des gouttes de sang."
La Colombe.—"Je reviens mourir, où il m'a aimé, car il ne m'aime plus."
The once haughty and triumphant Rachel had already tasted the bitterness of death when she wrote these words.
- ↑ Quotation from the ode written by M. de Trobriand.